The project is a longitudinal study focusing on children's developing metalinguistic abilities (e.g., judgments of synonymy and acceptability, phonological awareness, detection of rhyming, interpretation of metaphors, etc.). Testing will begin when the children are 3 years old and continue until they are 8. In addition to examining the developmental courses of several kinds of metalinguistic abilities, the study will examine the developmental relationships among these abilities and between them and language comprehension and cognitive developmental changes occurring during the same period.